Recently in Investments Category

Even with the economic doldrums, there are still money floating around for green chems and biofuel. Here are some of the recent ones that came to the blog's attention. The blog, of course, already posted about Genomatica getting its $41.5m financing from new investor and partner Versalis as well as existing investors Alloy Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mohr Davidow Ventures, TPG Biotech, VantagePoint Capital Partners and Waste Management.

• Elevance raises $104m in its series E financing round led by Lacustrine Ltd (via Genting Genomics) and Total Energy Ventures.

• Global Bioenergies have raised EUR3.04m on Paris-based NYSE Alternext from 153,459 new shares issued with a price of EUR 19.80 per share. The company now has a market capitalization of around EUR36m ($45.5m). 

• Myriant receives $25m private bond placement under the US Department of Agriculture's Business and Industry loan guarantee program. Myriant is the first bio-based chemicals company to receive funding from USDA's B&I Rural Development Loan Guarantee program.

• Amyris will receive up to $82m from Total's funding budget over the next three years exclusively for the deployment of Amyris' Biofene in renewable diesel and jet fuel applications. Upon completion of the research and development program, Total and Amyris intend to form a joint venture company that would have exclusive rights to produce and market renewable diesel and/or jet fuel, as well as non-exclusive rights to other specialty products.

• Zeachem has been awarded part of a $6m grant by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and US Department of Energy (DOE) for the development of advanced biofuels utilizing tropical grasses. ZeaChem is part of a consortium led by the University of Hawaii that includes Oregon State University, Washington State University, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company, and Hawaii BioEnergy LLC.

• Cooper Tire & Rubber Company and its consortium partners has been awarded $6.9m grant from the USDA. The four-year grant will focus on research efforts aimed at developing enhanced manufacturing processes, testing and utilizing of guayule natural rubber as a strategic source of raw material in tires, and evaluating the remaining biomass of the guayule plant as a source of bio-fuel for the transportation industry.

• Edeniq, a biomaterials and sustainable fuels company, has secured a $3.9 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC). The grant is part of California's Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program, which provides funding for the development of new, California-based biofuel production facilities.

• Fulcrum Sierra Biofuels has received a $105m loan guarantee from the USDA to finance development of its facility that can convert municipal solid waste into advanced biofuels. Once operational, the plant is expected to convert 147,000 tons of processed municipal solid waste into over 10 million gallons of advanced biofuels annually using a two-part thermo-chemical process.

• Oakbio, the developer of microbe-based technology that captures CO2 from waste gas and converts the carbon into chemicals, has been awarded $474,843 in response to Grant Solicitation PON-11-502 of the Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program of the California Energy Commission. Oakbio's research grant project will be initiated August 2012 and will run for 2.5 years.

• Sweetwater Energy, a Rochester, NY-based cellulosic sugar manufacturer, has closed a $9m series A funding round. Earlier this year, Sweetwater began operation of its pilot-scale cellulosic sugar processing facility at its location in Rochester.

• Chemtex International has been selected by the USDA to participate in the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). The $3,996,000 award will support establishing and growing over 4,000 acres of miscanthus and switchgrass across eleven counties in North Carolina. This feedstock will be part of the biomass supply for Project Alpha, a 20 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol biorefinery planned to be built in Sampson County with a plant startup expected in 2014.

PAST NEWS:

Inventure Renewables and its sister company, Inventure International, have closed a $5m round of financing in May with an option to increase funding in a second tranche to a total of $12 Million. Lead investor Wilmar International has taken an equity stake in both companies. A portion of the funds will be used to build and operate a pilot plant to convert palm fiber waste and sugar cane bagasse into mixed sugars, which can be used for fermentation into ethanol, butanol, and the creation of building blocks for a range of industrial chemicals.

Virdia, formerly HCL CleanTech, a developer of cellulosic sugars bagged in March, a $75 million deal with the Mississippi Development Authority to build manufacturing plants in the state. Virdia also raised over $20 million early this year from Khosla Ventures, Burrill & Company and Tamar Ventures. In addition, the company closed $10 million in a venture debt deal with Triple Point Capital.

BioAmber has completed its Series C round of financing with net proceeds of $30 million. The financing was closed in two tranches; a first tranche of $20 million on November 4th, 2011 with existing investors Naxos Capital, Sofinnova Partners, Mitsui & Co. Ltd. and the Cliffton Group, and a second tranche of $10 million on February 6th, 2012 with specialty chemicals company LANXESS.

LS9 received earlier this year a $4.5m funding from the Florida Opportunity Fund's (FOF) Clean Energy Investment program. The Clean Energy Investment Program was created to promote the adoption of EE/RE products and technologies in Florida by providing funding to businesses to increase the use of EE/RE technologies, equipment and materials in the State.

An official from the government of Malaysia's biotechnology investment agency BiotechCorp sent the blog an email today regarding their Malaysian ringgit (M$)170m (€42.3m, $53.3m) investment for a biorefinery complex in Kertih, in the Terengganu State, which is expected to attract foreign companies to set up shop for their cellulosic-based manufacturing facilities.

The site will reportedly be Asia's largest biorefinery complex, which will sit on a 1,000 hectare land located at Kertih Biopolymer Park (developed by the East Coast Economic Region Development Council or ECERDC or Malaysia).

The site will also have a 30,000 hectares of land dedicated for feedstock plantations that will produce 10.5m tonnes/year of woodchips from Acacia mangium and Leucaena leucocephala -- I have no idea how to pronounce this -- but it is also locally known as "Petai Belalang."

This project is a collaboration between the Terengganu State government, BiotechCorp and ECERDC. BiotechCorp is Malaysia's biotech development agency assigned together with ECERDC to engage global industry biotechnology players especially from the US, Europe, Korea and Japan to set-up their bio-based chemical manufacturing facility in Kertih Biopolymer Park.

In fact, the agencies have already attracted a (M$)3.2bn investment from a joint venture between Korean chemical firm CJ CheilJedang (remember this company? It is also in partnership with Metabolix...) and France-based Arkema to manufacture bio-methionine and other thiochemical platform at an 80,000 tonne/year facility to be located at Kertih Biopolymer park.

For more about bio-methionine, click this link that the blog posted in January.

BiotechCorp said it is expecting  the new complex to be occupied by 8 global industrial biotechnology players by 2015.

In fact, another well-known industrial biotechnology company will announce their plans to set up shop in the complex next week at the BIO 2012 conference, according to the agency. I wonder who could that be??? I am thinking of LanzaTech given its activities in the cellulosic woodchips area as well as its familiarity in the Asian markets...

The Kertih Biopolymer Park, by the way, is also close to PETRONAS Kertih Integrated Petrochemical Complex, which, according to BiotechCorp, allows cross supply of products between both complexes, while providing economies of scale for utilities supply and logistics. 

"The complex will further create opportunities for technology and science-driven companies in the green chemical sector; which is central to the development of the bio-based economy. More significantly, it is one of the many crucial initiatives driven by BiotechCorp as a commitment to advance the bio-chemical sector and to secure a targeted RM4 billion of investment in the industrial biotechnology sector by 2013 to drive the Commercialization Phase of the National Biotechnology Policy (NBP)." - Dato' Dr Mohd Nazlee Kamal, CEO of BiotechCorp

The total project is expected to generate a cumulative gross national income of (M$) 20.4bn by 2020 and produce 2,500 green-jobs for Malaysia.

Manufacturing facilities that will be set up on the site are expected to produce advanced carbohydrates, bio-based chemicals, bio-based materials, bio-based fertilizers and active feed ingredients using cellulosic feedstock.

Signing ceremony between BiotechCorp, ECERDC and the Terengganu State Government

Cellulosic biomass technology developer GraalBio is planning to help build Brazil's biorefinery industry with a R$300m ($146m) investment of a new 22m gallons/year cellulosic ethanol plant to be constructed in Alagoas using sugarcane bagasse and straw for initial feedstock.

GraalBio is also developing a new type of cost-competitive biomass called Energy Cane, a cross hybrid of sugarcane varieties with selected types of grasses producing low sugar content but high fiber. An experimental site in Alagoas is expected to produce 100,000 Energy Cane seedlings by the end of the year. The company is hoping to achieve productivity target of 100 tons of dry mass/hectare.

GraalBio said the cellulosic ethanol facility will be Brazil's first. Construction is expected to start in July and start-up of operations is expected by the end of 2013. For pretreatment and conversion of biomass, GraalBio has licensed the PROESA technology from Italy-based Beta Renewables - a joint venture between Chemtex (a division of Italian plastic producer Gruppo Mossi & Ghisolfi) and investment firm TPG.

Chemtex will provide engineering services, equipment and technical field services to GraalBio's facility. Danish firm Novozymes and the Netherlands-based DSM will provide the enzymes and industrial yeasts, respectively.

By the way, Novozymes said it has been looking for locations in Brazil to build its new enzyme manufacturing plants dedicated to support the country's growing advanced biofuel industry.

"The location of new plants will, among other things, depend on where the industry is expected to scale up, where Novozymes' partners are located, and where the best framework conditions exist," says Peder Holk Nielsen, Novozymes VP.

"While the maturity of second-generation biofuels technologies in Brazil is materializing, the U.S. is building 29 biorefineries for several products obtained from the conversion of cellulose. GraalBio is in negotiations with patent holders to license, purchase and apply industrial solutions in Brazil, and it will look for partners in Brazil in different areas, including co-development, supply of feedstock and new projects." - GraalBio

The flavors and fragrance (F&F) market seem to be benefiting from renewable chemicals developments from players such as Amyris, Allylix and Blue Marble Biomaterials...and chemical firms also supplying the F&F market are taking notice.

BASF announced on Monday that its venture capital business has invested $13.5m in Allylix, which BASF said allows them to leverage their aroma chemicals, nutrition and cosmetic chemicals competency. BASF is one of the biggest global producer of aroma chemicals by the way.

According to a study released last year by US accounting firm Marcum LLP and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, the market for aroma chemicals and essential oils are [either] both a rapidly expanding market segment [or] and a highly profitable product segment. 

"The highest growth companies in the study, those that experienced over 6% growth year-over-year, generated 20% of their overall revenue from the sale of aroma chemical and essential oils while "low-growth" companies (those with 1-2% growth year-over-year) generated half as much of their revenue from this product segment."

It was a fantastic 2-day marathon attending the Jefferies Global Clean Technology conference. I was able to file 5 news articles on ICIS (subscription-based):

• Bio-latex rises as alternative to styrene butadiene materials
• Codexis interim CEO allays investor fears on management changes
• US Metabolix eyes smaller 10,000 tonne/year bioplastic production
• Dutch Avantium plans to start selling bio-polyester by 2015
• US DuPont expects $1.2bn in 2012 sales for industrial biotech

Unfortunately, I am not able to post these stories for free but the good news is that I have more stories to post where these came from (hopefully after my school exam next week Wednesday).

In the meantime, let's talk about LS9, and I've "whined" before that I really did not have any clue on what specific products they are aiming to commercialize even after their scale-up announcement last November.

The company is now ready to talk "future product sales" and even has a fancy new website to show for it (also got a brochure from the conference about their company). According to LS9 CEO Ed Dineen at the Jefferies conference, the company is hoping to hit their commercialization target (they are about 85% right now) by the end of this year.

The company's initial products in the chemicals space are sugar-based fatty alcohols (C10-C18) and specialty esters. Dineen said it has already shipped a ton of fatty alcohol from its pilot facility (and headquarters) in San Francisco to Procter & Gamble late last year for sampling into surfactant products.

The pilot plant is running at 20,000 liter-fermentation capacity, which is expected to increase to 50,000 liter capacity this quarter. LS9 is also on the verge of starting up their 135,000 liter fermentation vessel at the company's Okeechobee, Florida facility early in the second quarter.

"At that scale, we close to world-scale fermentation, which is about 3-4x away. We are well along the pathway towards de-risking our technology processing. The Florida facility has four (each at 700,000 liter) world-scale fermentation capability, which we could bring on in a commercial situation if we find the right opportunity. Today, we envision this facility to be mostly a demo and scaling up facility." - Dineen.  

Dineen said the company is looking for a strategic round of funding this year to go to commercial-scale up by the end of 2014.

The company is looking to build a brownfield 10,000-25,000 tonnes/year facility initially in Brazil to produce sugarcane-based chemicals. Dineen said they're looking at between $35m and $50m for funding. The company said it is also close to getting funding support from a Brazilian development bank.

"We don't necessarily need to jump into a 100,000 tonnes/year plant. Once we de-risk commercial production, we can just add more and more fermenters to build our way up to world-scale facility. The lower-scale approach also minimizes feedstock challenge. It is better to work your way up as mills also expand and grow." - Dineen.

I actually saw tweets last week about Amyris' announcement to scale back its 2012 farnesene "Biofene" production but I wasn't sure if I should wait further for the company's fourth quarter earnings results, which will be out on February 27, before posting this.

However, given that I will cover NatureWorks' bioplastic conference "Innovation Takes Roots" in Orlando on February 20, and the Jefferies Global CleanTech Conference on February 22 and 23, PLUS, Gevo and Solazyme will also post their quarter earnings results in the next few days, there will be lots more news piling up my draft box (Codexis' earnings result that came out on February 7 is already waiting in there...)

So let's get on with this one.

 When Amyris announced its unexpected "not-so-positive"earnings guidance on late February 9, several investment firms downgraded the company such as Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Piper Jaffray, Raymond James and RW Baird. The company's shares dropped 29% to $6.93 on February 10, well below it's previous 52-week low of $8.77.

Amyris told analysts that:

• It is scrapping its plans for its second industrial-scale production facility, which is owned by penicillin producer Antibioticos S.A. in Leon, Spain. Instead, Amyris will only complete its initial industrial-scale plant project in Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, where it has formed joint ventures with Paraiso Bioenergia and Grupo Sao Martinho. Last year, Amyris received $12.6m in financing from the Brazilian Development Bank for the Piracicaba project. 


• In conjunction with the cut, it will no longer produce 40-50 million liters of Biofene the company projected for 2012. Amyris said it has produced over 1m liters of Biofene from three contract facilities -Biomin in Piracicaba, Brazil; Antibioticos in Leon, Spain; and Tate & Lyle in Illinois, US. The company set production target at 9m liters in early 2011 and was reduced to 1-2m liters in the latter months. 


• Another in conjunction, Amyris will not be able to forecast positive cashflow this year and instead needs to raise additional equity financing. The financing is expected to close in the coming weeks, according to Amyris.


• The company will also eliminate reporting production forecasts on its quarterly earnings, and instead will only provide production results and updates on their progress. 


• Another big change is refocusing its Biofene commercialization in higher-margin markets like polymers, cosmetics, flavors and fragrances, and branded consumer products, instead of higher-volume markets such as biofuel and base oil. Development in the biofuel/base oil areas will instead be pursued through joint ventures with partners "capable of driving these products to scale," the company said. Amyris, emphasized, however, that it is not stopping its relatively small scale biofuel production, where some of is already being used to make diesel fuel for buses in Sao Paulo (supply contract ends in 2012) and Rio de Janeiro (fleet test ends in July 2012)

"We showed conclusively that our technology does work at scale, but also learned that it takes time to translate from peak yield levels in the lab to maintaining those yields over longer operational periods in the field. Our priority is now to establish reliable production across our facilities. We need to retain flexibility in how we optimize between production volume, cost, customer demand and cash, rather than driving to deliver a predetermined production volume." - John Melo, CEO.

It looks like a good start for 2012 with several companies closing some good funding this month.

New Zealand-based LanzaTech announced this week that it has bagged a total of US $55.8m in its series C round of financing led by the Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund. New investors include PETRONAS Technology Ventures Sdn Bhd and Dialog Group. Existing investors such as Khosla Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners and K1W1 -- I like this name =) -- participated in the round as well. LanzaTech said the compay raised a total of more than $85m to date.

The company also gave a small update on their $5m acquisition of a US cellulosic ethanol facility now dubbed "Freedom Pines Biorefinery" located in Soperton, Georgia, which was previously owned by Range Fuels. LanzaTech said, the facility will produce renewable fuels and chemicals from waste wood using their proprietary processing technology (industrial waste gas-to-fuel/chemicals via fermentation).

Another recent news is advanced fuel developer KiOR closing a $75m four-year term loan with a lender group comprised of  an affiliate of Vinod Khosla and two Canadian corporations owned by pension fund clients of Alberta Investment Management Corp.

Waste CO2-to-fuel/chemicals developer Joule has also closed a $70m funding this month bringing a total funding round of more than $110m to date. The company did not disclose funding sources.

The proceeds will be applied towards the build-out and operation of a Joule facility located in Hobbs, New Mexico and slated for commissioning in the summer of 2012. Joule was founded by venture capital firm Flagship Ventures in 2007.

Zeachem also announced yesterday that it has been selected by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a $232.5m loan guarantee under the 9003 Biorefinery Assistance Program. The conditional loan enables the financing and construction of ZeaChem's first commercial-scale cellulosic biorefinery in Boardman, Oregon, with a capacity of 25m gal/year enabling the production of cellulosic ethanol and acetic acid/ethyl acetate using woody biomass.

On Wednesday, Canadian renewable chemical firm EcoSynthetix secured a $2.1m funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). The funding will support EcoSynthetix's project for further development of its EcoMer® bio-based monomer platform.

The blog also received news from Bioformix CEO Adam Malofsky that the company closed a $13m funding from GM Ventures this month and is waiting to close another funding from a big Japanese multinational company soon.

Also this year, we had BASF investing $30m in cellulosic sugar developer Renmatix; Agilyx secured $25m in its series C funding; DSM investing $250m in cellulosic ethanol via its joint venture with US developer POET;  US biodiesel company Renewable Energy Group targeting $100m via its IPO filing; DuPont investing in biomass sorghum developer NextSteppe (undisclosed amount); and another sorghum developer Chromatin has been awarded $5.7m grant from the US DOE.

I've compiled a rough list of last year's financing rounds and IPOs. Hopefully, this will be useful to you.

Source: Company Reports